Sails Of Glory Miniatures Game

I've always found the age of sail interesting, but to be honest, I could never see it taking priority over my many projects I've had going on throughout my gaming "career" - and so I've dabbled here and there, most notably when the Trafalgar rules were released by Warhammer Historical, which quickly moved me into using Signal Close Action by Langton Miniatures - which is a great rule set and whom offers the finest 1/1200 scale age of sail ships and accessories.  Of course, the main challenge here is that assembling, painting, and most critically, rigging, takes an large amount of effort.  It is also extremely difficult to find painting services that will do justice to the ships and their rigging.  So my stuff sat buried in my lead pile ...

Enter Sails of Glory by Ares.

Sails of Glory by Ares

I do recall seeing the Kickstarter for this game ... but I was at the time heavily invested in the Robotech Kickstarter (of which I am tracking closely, and very happy that they are taking the time to get it right ...), so I mentally bookmarked it and promptly forgot about it since my memory sucks.  Boy, I'm kicking myself now for missing it.  This game fits the bill is so many ways:

• Prepaints.  Ok, not at all spectacular ... but finished and very playable for the scale.
• Basic, standard and advanced rules.  This is a game that can scale its rules up to give any existing set of age of sail rules a run for their money.  The advanced rules are very playable and deliver a highly enjoyable game with the right level of detail.
• Excellent support.  The accessories - counters, mat, etc. are all high quality and give you a high quality miniature gaming experience "out of the box."

My primary knock against the game right now is that the layout for the rules, separated into basic, standard, and advanced leaves much to be desired.  The rules are of themselves decently written, and good - but flipping between the three levels of rules leaves you a bit confused.  The system really needs a quality reference sheet - there are a couple of spreadsheet style ones available now, but they are only ok (but do help, and are a must until there is something better).

Other than that ... awesome game and I highly recommend it.  I picked up the "captains" Kickstarter off of Ebay and it is worth every penny I spent.  Roy also recently picked up the main box set for Sails of Glory from our local game store and we've managed to have a couple of games now (while I wait for my Kickstarter package from Ebay).

The contents of the "Captains" Kickstarter.

Today Roy played British and I played French - each of us using a ship of the line and a frigate.  The second game went quickly - primarily due to a high number of collisions as we tried to avoid reefs and land (I recommend playing your first game without terrain - it adds a whole new level of tactical challenges into the game).  My poor frigate was blown up and my ship of the line ran aground after a traffic jam in front of the central island.  I did a number on the crew of both British ships, but it wasn't enough at the end of the day.

The game kicks off!

Death of a frigate - my damage track has one box
left ... and although a repair action is in progress
it would not complete in time ... glug glug glug ...

The dial to the left allows players to manage wind
direction and strength (a must for playing this game).
The "pointy" dial is used to determine if your ship
is running, beating, taken aback, etc. - which
has great influence over your ships movement.

Crunch!  When ships collide they deal damage to each
other equal to their burden (size).

In other news, I've been hard at work on 4Ground buildings and I'm making excellent progress on the "Villers-Bocage" scenario and setup I'll be running at KublaCon in May.